CES: Sony’s Rolly, cool or a cute gimmick?

I’m still trying to make sense of the Sony Rolly. It’s an egg-shaped MP3 player that dances to its own music.

Watching it live, you get a sense that it’s actually pretty cool, just a fun device that makes listening to music entertaining. But then, you think, will I really want this more than an iPod? Is life so so much worse when my MP3 player doesn’t dance?

Sony has been selling the Rolly in Japan since last September, but it hasn’t released sales numbers yet. They say, though, that the Rolly has sold suprisingly well with males, defying some early internal predictions.

While it may be popular among Japanese males, I’m still on the fence, trying to decide if the Rolly is destined to make an impact here in the states.

Let’s consider the basic information. The Rolly dances and flashes lights in sequence to music it plays. It has 2 Gigabytes of internal storage for music but it can also stream music from another device via Bluetooth.

The sounds is actually pretty good and the Rolly responds to the music, dancing in time with it. You can also customize the Rolly’s movements if you so choose.

Sony said it will be available in Sony Style stores this spring though the price hasn’t been set. So after watching the video, what do you think? Cool gift of lame gimmick?